25 Creationist' Arguments 25 Evolutionist' Answers

What is the problem with fundamentalists? The Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Orlando in 2000 said more than "women should graciously submit to their husbands." Their main complaint was society's rejection of "supernaturalism" in science, the humanities, etc. What that means is natural events should be attributed to magic and divine intervention, not reason, random chance, or just plain bad luck.

Their contention is every event is the direct work of God and there is no element of chance. Anything that disagrees with their version of Scripture is wrong, regardless of the proof. If an airplane crashes, it was the will of God to punish sin. A hurricane hits Florida, it's the work of God punishing sin. A child dies of SIDS, sin again.

But what of those without sin? Does God "punish" innocent newborns or the God-fearing Christian on the plane for the sins of others? According to fundamentalists everybody is born in sin and thus it is "moral" for God to kill! If the innocent die to punish sinners, they really weren't innocent after all and thus the whole affair is moral.

Utter rubbish! To depict God as a murderer (they insist on the word punishment) is just wrong. Science does not work on magic or revelation and any thinking Christian wouldn't claim God is a murderer regardless of their political agenda. If disbelieving God murders children is being a humanist, and then I'm proud to be a humanist. Science rejects magic that for centuries did nothing but let millions die of illnesses that today can be cured for pennies.

Today God is alive and well and we usually don't let children die of infections for superstitious dribble. God gave us reason to think and free will to use that reason. Yet there are those that deny God's gifts and insist on silly magic, faith healing, and that a 6000-year-old flat earth be taught as science. The glory of God is God's creation of the universe, not the man-made books of holy men. My comments appear in red below.

1. Creation-science is scientific and therefore should be taught in public
school science courses.

Creation science is scientific in name only. It is a thinly disguised
religious position espousing the doctrine of special creation, and
therefore is not appropriate for public school science courses, any more
than calling something Muslim-science or Buddha-science or
Christian-science would require equal time.

The following statement from
the Institute for Creation Research, the "research" arm of Christian
Heritage College and to which all faculty members and researchers adhere,
is proof of their true beliefs. There is nothing scientific about
"creation-science":

"we believe in the absolute integrity of holy scripture and its
plenary verbal inspiration by the holy spirit as originally written by men
prepared for God for this purpose. The scriptures, both Old and New
Testaments, are inerrant in relation to any subject with which they deal,
and are to be accepted in their natural and intended sense...

all things
in the universe were created and made by God in the six days of special
creation described in Genesis. The creationist account is accepted as
factual, historical and perspicuous and is thus fundamental in the
understanding of every fact and phenomenon in the created universe."

2. Neither creationism nor evolutionary theory is scientific because
"science only deals with the here-and-now and cannot answer historical
questions about the creation of the universe and the origins of life and man."

This, of course, undermines the entire superstructure of "creation-science"
and argument #1, but is untrue anyway because science does deal with past
phenomena, as found in the historical sciences of cosmology, geology,
paleontology, paleoanthropology, and archaeology.

There are experimental
sciences and historical sciences, using different methodologies but equal
in their ability to understand causality, and evolutionary biology is a
valid and legitimate historical science.

If this statement were true, much
of science, not just evolutionary theory, would be sterile.

3. Since education is a process of learning all sides of an issue, it is
appropriate for both creationism and evolution to be taught side-by-side in
public school classrooms.

Not to do so is a violation of the philosophy of
education, and of the civil liberties of creationists. I.e., we have a
"right" to be heard. Besides, what is the harm in hearing both sides?

The multiple sides of issues is indeed a part of the general educational
process, and it might be appropriate to discuss creationism in courses on
religion, history, or even philosophy, but most certainly not science, any
more than biology courses should include lectures on American Indian
creation-myths.

Not to do so violates no rights, since nowhere in nature or
the Constitution does it say everyone has a right to teach creationism in
public schools. Rights do not exist in nature.

Rights are a concept
constructed by humans to protect certain freedoms, but have degenerated
into pleas for special privilege by nearly every group and individual in
America who want something they do not have.

Finally, there is considerable
harm in teaching "creation-science" as science because it is an attack on
all the sciences, not just evolutionary biology. If the universe and Earth
are only about 10,000 years old, cosmology, astronomy, physics, chemistry,
geology, paleontology, et al, would be invalidated.

Creationism cannot even
be partially correct. As soon as supernatural causation is allowed in the
creation of even one species, they could all be created this way, and the
assumption of natural laws in nature is voided and science becomes meaningless.

4. There is an amazing correlation between the "facts" of nature and the
"acts" of the Bible. It is therefore appropriate to cross-reference
creation-science books with the Bible, and to look to study the Bible, as a
book of science, along with the book of nature.

The true stripes of the creationists can be seen in the following quote
from Henry Morris, head of the Institute for Creation Research, that
reveals his preference for faith in authority over any possible
contradictory empirical evidence (and thus demonstrating their lack of
scientific methodology):

"The main reason for insisting on the universal Flood as a fact of
history and as the primary vehicle for geological interpretation is that
God's Word plainly teaches it!

No geological difficulties, real or
imagined, can be allowed to take precedence over the clear statements and
necessary inferences of Scripture."

It would be ludicrous to imagine professors at CALTECH, for example, making
a similar statement of belief in Darwin's Origin or Newton's Principia,
such that no difficulties could take precedence over the authority of the book.

5. The theory of natural selection is tautological, or a form of circular
reasoning. Those that survive are the best adapted. Who are the best
adapted?

Those that survive. Likewise, rocks are used to date fossils, and
fossils are used to date rocks. Tautologies do not make a science.

Creationists have a very simplistic and naive understanding of the workings
of natural selection and geological forces. First of all, natural selection
is by no means the only mechanism of organic change (e.g. Darwin wrote an
entire book about sexual selection).

Second, population genetics demonstrates quite
clearly, and with mathematical prediction, when natural selection will and
will not effect change on a population.

Third, one can make predictions
based on the theory of natural selection, and then test them, as the
geneticist does in the example above, or the paleontologist does in
interpreting the fossil record.

Natural selection and the theory of
evolution are testable and falsifiable. Finding hominid fossils in the same
geological strata as trilobites, for example would be evidence against the
theory.

The dating of fossils with rocks and vice versa could only be done
after the geological column was established. The geological column exists
nowhere in its entirety because strata are disrupted, convoluted, and
always incomplete for a variety of reasons.

But strata order is
unmistakably non-random and chronological order can be accurately pieced
together using a variety of techniques only one of which is fossils.

6. There are "only two explanations for the origins of life and existence
of man, plants and animals: It was either the work of a creator or it was
not."

Since evolution theory is unsupported by the evidence (i.e. it is
wrong), creationism must be correct. Any evidence "which fails to support
the theory of evolution is necessarily scientific evidence in support of
creationism."

Beware of anyone who says, "there are only two..." It is the classic
mistake of logic known as the either-or fallacy, or the fallacy of false
alternatives. If A is false, B must be true. Oh? Why? Plus, should not B
stand on its own regardless of A?

Of course. So even if evolutionary theory
turns out to be completely wrong and the whole thing was a big mistake,
that does not mean that, ergo, creationism is right.

There may be
alternatives C, D, and E we have yet to consider. There is, however, a true
dichotomy in the case of natural v. supernatural explanations.

Either life was created and changed by natural means or it did not. Scientists assume
natural causation, and evolutionists debate the various natural causal
agents involved, not whether it happened by natural or supernatural means.

7. Evolutionary theory is the basis of Marxism, communism, atheism,
immorality, and the general decline of the morals and culture of America,
and therefore is bad for our children.

In this argument we begin to see the cultural background of creationism as
a social and political movement, not a scientific one. This is, in part,
why they have turned to the legal system to try to get the state to force
their "science" on students. But legislation cannot make a belief system
scientific; only scientists can do that.

The theory of evolution in particular, and science in general, is no more
the basis of these "isms" than the printing press is responsible for
Hitler's Mein Kampf.

The fact that the science of genetics has been used to
buttress racial theories of the innate inferiority of certain groups does
not mean we should abandon the study of genes.

There may well be Marxist,
communist, atheist, and even immoral (however defined) evolutionists, but
there are probably just as many capitalist, theist (or agnostic), and moral
evolutionists.

As for the theory itself, it can be used to support Marxist,
communist, and atheist ideologies, and it has; but so has it been used
(especially in America), to lend scientific credence to laissez-faire
capitalism.

Linking scientific theories to political ideologies is tricky
business and we must be cautious of making connections that do not
necessarily follow.

8. Evolutionary theory, along with its bed-partner secular humanism, is
really a religion, so it is not appropriate to teach it in public schools.

To call the science of evolutionary biology a religion is to so broaden the
definition of religion as to make it totally meaningless. Science is a set
of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred
phenomenon, past or present, aimed at building a testable body of knowledge
open to rejection or confirmation.

Religion - whatever it is - is certainly
not "testable," nor is it "open to rejection or confirmation." Similarly,
the "secular" of secular humanism expressly means "not religious," and
therefore cannot be considered a religion.

In their methodologies science
and religion are 180 degrees out of phase with each other.

9. Many leading evolutionists are skeptical of the theory and find it
problematic. E.g., Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge have proven that
Darwin was wrong through their theory of punctuated equilibrium. If the
world's leading evolutionists cannot agree on the theory, the whole thing
must be a wash.

It is particularly ironic that the creationists would quote the leading
spokesman against creationism - Gould - in their attempts to marshal the
forces of science on their side.

Creationists have misunderstood, either
naively or intentionally, the healthy scientific debate amongst
evolutionists about the causal agents or organic change.

They apparently
perceive this normal exchange of ideas and self-correcting nature of
science as evidence that the field is coming apart at the seams.

Of the
many things evolutionists argue and debate about within the field, one
thing they are certain of and all agree upon is that evolution has
occurred. Exactly how it happened, and what the relative strengths of the
various causal mechanisms are, continues to be discussed.

Eldredge and
Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium is a refinement of and improvement
upon Darwin's larger theory of evolution. It no more proves Darwin wrong
than Einsteinian relativity proves Newton wrong.

10. The whole history of evolutionary theory in particular, and science in
general, is the history of mistaken theories and overthrown ideas. Nebraska
Man, Piltdown Man, Calaveras Man and Hesperopithecus are just a few of the
blunders scientists have made. Clearly science cannot be trusted and modern
theories are no better than past ones.

Again, this is a gross misunderstanding of the nature of science, which is
constantly building upon the ideas of the past. Science does not just
change, it builds on the past and goes beyond to the future.

It does make
mistakes aplenty, but the self-correcting feature of the scientific method
is one of its most beautiful assets.

Hoaxes like Piltdown Man and Calaveras
Man, and honest mistakes like Nebraska Man and Hesperopithecus, are, in
time, exposed. Science picks itself up, shakes itself off, and moves on. As
Einstein said, science may be "primitive and childlike," but "it is the
most precious thing we have."

(It is especially paradoxical for creation
"scientists" to cloak themselves in the rhetoric of science, and
simultaneously attack the very virtues it claims to possess.)

11. All causes have effects. The cause of "X" must be "X-like." That is,
the cause of intelligence must be intelligent. Also, regress all causes in
time and you must conclude that there was a first cause - God.

Likewise
with motion (all things in motion proves that there must have been a prime
mover, a mover who needs no other mover to be moved - God); and purpose
(all things in the universe have a purpose, therefore there must be an
intelligent designer).

If this were true, should not nature then have a natural cause, not a
supernatural cause?! But it is not true: causes of "X" do not have to be
"X-like." The "cause" of green paint is blue mixed with yellow paint,
neither one of which is green like.

Animal manure makes fruit trees grow
better. Fruit is delicious to eat and is, therefore, very unmanure-like!
The first-cause and prime-mover argument, brilliantly proffered by St.

Thomas Aquinas in the 14th Century and still more brilliantly refuted by
David Hume in the 18th century, is easily answered with just one more
question: who or what caused and moved God?

Finally, as Hume demonstrated,
"purposefulness" is often illusory and subjective. "The early bird gets the
worm" is a clever design if you are the bird, not so good if you are the
worm.

Two eyes may seem like the ideal number, but, as Richard Hardison
notes with levity, "wouldn't it be desirable to have an additional eye in
the back of one's head, and certainly an eye attached to our forefinger
would be helpful when we're working behind the instrument panels of
automobiles."

Purpose is, in part, what we are accustomed to perceiving.
Finally, not everything is so purposeful and beautifully designed. In
addition to the problems of evil, disease, and deformities that
creationists conveniently overlook, nature is filled with the bizarre and
seemingly unpurposeful.

Male nipples and the Panda's thumb are just two
examples that Gould is fond of flaunting as purposeless and poorly designed
structures. If God so graciously designed life to fit neatly together like
a jigsaw puzzle, then how do you explain these oddities?

12. Something cannot be created out of nothing, say scientists. Therefore,
from where did the material for the Big Bang come? And, from where did the
first life forms originate that provided the raw material for evolution?
And the Stanley Miller experiment of creating amino acids out of an
inorganic "soup" and other biogenic molecules is not the creation of life.

Science is not equipped to answer certain "ultimate" type questions, such
as: "what was there before the beginning of the universe?" "What time was
it before time began?" "Where did the matter come from for the Big Bang?"

These are philosophical or religious questions, not scientific ones, and
therefore are not part of science. Evolutionary theory attempts to
understand the causality of change after time and matter were "created"
(whatever that means).

As for the origins of life, biochemists do have a
very rational and scientific explanation for the evolution from inorganic
to organic compounds, the creation of amino acids and the construction of
protein chains, the first crude cells, and so on. (And Miller never claimed
to have created life, just some building blocks of life.)

While these
theories are by no means robust and still subject to lively scientific
debate, there is a reasonable explanation for how you get from the Big Bang
to the Big Brain in the know universe.

EDITOR'S SPECIFIC REBUTTALS:

To #11 - The Deist argument for the existence of God, (which should not be
confused with any of the manufactured revealed religions that pile man-made
dogma and opinion onto this simple belief) as put forth by Thomas Paine is
that God is an eternal entity whose power is equal to His/Her will.

He/She
is the first cause, and is knowable through the laws of nature and nature
herself. As Mr. Shermer writes in his answer to the next question, question
#12, "Science is not equipped to answer certain 'ultimate' questions, . .
."

This is because science rightly requires definite facts and not
opinions. In the past, science was not equipped to answer questions that
are common knowledge today, such as, "Is the earth the center of the
universe?" or, "Is the universe static or expanding?" As science and
humanities's knowledge grow, I believe we will eventually get closer to a
more accurate knowledge of God, the Creator of the Universe, not god the
carpenter.

Moving away from primary importance being placed on the individual, and
basing our observations on the idea of what is good universally, (as in
Thoreau's statement regarding "the steady progress of the Universe") we see
a bigger part of the big picture and know it is good for all that in this
scenario the worm gets eaten by the bird.

This, obviously feeds the bird
and its young as well as guarantees more food and space for other worms to
say nothing of enhancing the species based evolution and survival of the
fittest.

If we remain stuck in the dogma of revealed religion we cannot
expand our thinking to the point of being universal in nature. We then
continue to look on benign realities as somehow being evil, such as in the
relationship of predator and prey.

Because Deism teaches there is a God, or First Cause, but doesn't endorse
the nonsensical notions and dogmas of revealed religion like the creation
story in Genesis, the two oddities cited here regarding male nipples and
thumbs on Pandas could be looked upon as incomplete stages of evolution.

Regarding "evil, disease, and deformities," evil is primarily man-made and
cannot be blamed on God. Disease, to people like Christians who fear death
due to lack of trust in God, is part of nature which eventually brings
about death, which is also a part of nature.

Deformities can be looked at
as obstacles that make us work together and grow intellectually and
technologically as we overcome them. For example, Dr. Salk discovering a
cure for polio, or any of the hundreds of successes we collectively have
had over deformities and disease.

Because we don't understand something doesn't mean there is no reason for
it, or in this case, that there is no God. An analogy could be a young
child being taken to a doctor to have an injection.

To the child his or her
parents are wrong and don't know what they're doing having this stranger
jabbing a sharp piece of metal into their arm and then injecting a burning
liquid into them. They don't realize the big picture of sickness and
disease their parent's are protecting them from.

13. Population statistics demonstrate that at the present population and
rate of growth, there were only two people living approximately 6,300
years before present, or 4,300 B.C. This proves that humans and
civilization are quite young.

If the earth were old, say one
million years, over the course of 25,000 generations at 1/2% rate of
population growth and an average of 2.5 children per family, the present
population would be 10 to the power of 2100 people, which is impossible
since there are only 10 to the power of 130 electrons in the known
universe.

This silley statement is disproven by recorded history. In the 13-14th centuries the Black Plague killed as much as two-thirds of the population of Asia/Europe and that doesn't even include plagues that ripped through the Roman Empire in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. This is the misuse of linear progression again to distort the facts.

As Disraeli observed (and Mark Twain reiterated), there are three types
of lies: "lies, damn lies, and statistics." But if you
want to play the numbers game, here are a few: by this analysis, in 2,600
B.C. there would have been a total population on Earth of around 600
people.

We know with a high degree of certainty that in 2,600 B.C.
there were flourishing civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus
River Valley, China, etc. Giving Egypt an extremely generous 1/6th
of the world's population, for 60 people to have built the pyramids, not
to mention all the other architectural monuments, they most certainly
would have needed a miracle or two, or perhaps the assistance of ancient
astronauts! The fact is, populations do not grow in a steady
manner.

There are booms and busts, and the history of the human
population before the Industrial Revolution is one of prosperity and
growth, followed by famine and decline.

As humans struggled for
millennia to fend off extinction, the population curve was one of peaks
and valleys as it climbed steadily, though uncertainly upward. It
is only since the 19th century that the rate of increase has been
accelerating.

14. Natural selection can never account for anything other than minor
changes within species-microevolution. Mutations used by
evolutionists to explain microevolution are always harmful, rare, and
random, and cannot be the driving force of evolutionary change.

I shall never forget the four words pounded into the brains of us
students of evolutionary biologist Bayard Bratstram at California State
University, Fullerton-"Mutants are not monsters."

His point was that the public perception of mutations at the county fair-two
headed cows and the like-is not the sort of mutations evolutionists are
discussing. Clearly it would be unreasonable to argue that these
sorts of mutations are beneficial.

But most mutations are small
genetic or chromosomal abberations that have small effects. Some of
these small effects may provide benefits to an organism in an
ever-changing environment.

Also, the modern theory of
"allopatric speciation," first proffered by Ernst Mayr and
integrated into paleontology by Eldredge and Gould, demonstrates
precisely how natural selection, in conjunction with other forces and
contingencies of nature, can and does produce new species.

15. There are no transitional forms in the fossil record, anywhere,
including and especially humans. The whole fossil record is an
embarrassment to evolutionists.

What about Neanderthals?
These are all diseased skeletons-arthritis, rickets, etc., that create
the bowed legs, brow ridge, and larger skeletal structure. Homo
erectus, and Australopithecus, are just apes.

Creationists always quote Darwin's famous passage in the Origin of
Species in which he asks: "Why then is not every geological
formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?

Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic
chain; and this, perhaps, is the gravest objection which can be urged
against my theory." One answer is that there are plenty of
examples of transitional forms that have been discovered since Darwin's
time. Just look in any paleontology text.

A second answer was
provided in 1972 by Eldredge and Gould when they demonstrated that gaps
in the fossil record do not indicate missing data of slow and stately
change; rather, it is evidence of rapid and episodic change.

Using Mayr's "allopatric speciation," where small and unstable
"founder" populations are isolated at the periphery of the
larger populations's range, they show that the relatively rapid change in
this smaller gene pool creates new species but leaves behind few, if any,
fossils.

The process of fossilization is rare and infrequent
anyway. It is almost nonexistent during these times of rapid
speciation. A lack of fossils is evidence for rapid change, not
missing evidence for gradual evolution.

16. The Second Law of Thermodynamics proves that evolution cannot be true
since evolutionists state that the universe and life moves from chaos to
order and simple to complex, the exact opposite of the entropy predicted
by the Second Law.

First of all, on any scale other than the grandest of all-600 million
years of life on Earth-species do not evolve from simple to complex, and
life does not simply move from chaos to order.

The history of life
is checkered with false starts, failed experiments, small and mass
extinctions, and chaotic restarts. It is anything but the
Time/Life-book foldout from single cells to humans.

But even in the
big picture, the Second Law allows for such change because the Earth is
enveloped within a system that includes a constant input of energy from
the sun.

As long as the sun is burning, life may continue thriving
and evolving, just like automobiles may be prevented from rusting,
burgers can be heated in ovens, and all manner of things in apparent
violation of the Second Law's rule of entropy may continue.

But as
soon as the sun burns out entropy would take its course, and life would
cease. The Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to closed, isolated
systems.

Since the Earth receives a constant input of energy from
the sum, entropy may decrease and order increase (though the sun itself is running down in the
process). Thus, the Earth is not strictly a closed system and life
may evolve without violating natural law.

In addition, recent
research in chaos theory is demonstrating that order can and does
spontaneously generate out of apparent chaos, all without violating the
Second Law of Thermodynamics. Evolution no more breaks the Second
Law of Thermodynamics than one breaks the law of gravity by jumping
up.

17. Even the simplest of life forms are too complex to have come together
by random chance. Take a simple organism consisting of merely 100
parts. Mathematically there are 10 to the power of 158 possible
ways for the parts to link up.

There are not enough molecules in
the universe or time since the beginning to account for these possible
ways to come together in even this simple life form, let alone human
beings.

The human eye alone defies explanation by the randomness of
evolution. It is the equivalent of the monkey typing Hamlet, or
even "to be or not to be." It will not happen by random
change.

Natural selection is not "random" nor does it operate by
"chance." Natural selection preserves the gains and
eradicates the mistakes. The eye evolved from a single,
light-sensitive cell into the complex eye of today through hundreds if
not thousands of intermediate steps, many of which still exist in
nature.

In order for the monkey to type the first 13 letters of
Hamlet's soliloquy by chance, it would take 26 to the power of 13 number
of trials for success.

This is 16 times as great as the total
number of seconds that have elapsed in the lifetime of the solar
system.

But if each correct letter is preserved and each incorrect
letter eradicated, the process operates much faster. How much
faster? Richard Hardison constructed a computer program in which
letters were "selected" for or against, and it took an average
of only 335.2 trials to produce the sequence of letters
TOBEORNOTTOBE.

This takes the computer less than 90 seconds.
The entire play can be done in about 4.5 days!

18. Hydrodynamic sorting during the Flood explains the apparent
progression of fossils in geological strata. The simple, ignorant
organisms died in the sea and are on the bottom layers, while more
complex, smarter, and faster organisms dies higher up.

Not one trilobite floated upward to a higher strata? Not one dumb
horse was on the beach and drowned in a lower strata? Not one
flying pterodactyl made it above the Cretaceous layer?

Not one
moronic human did not come in out of the rain? Speaking of absurd
arguments, consider how a ship 450 feet long by 75 feet wide by 45 feet
high could house two each of the 10 to 100 million species on
Earth.

Even creationists have trouble with this one, so they claim
it was only 30,000 species, the rest "developing" from this
initial stock, making creationists the greatest proponents of rapid
evolution!

In addition, how do you feed 60,000 animals for 371
days? Still more complicated, how do you keep 60,000 animals from
feeding on each other? Worst of all, who was in charge of clean
up?

19. The dating techniques of evolutionists are inconsistent, unreliable,
and wrong. They give false impressions of an old Earth, when in
fact it is no older than 10,000 years, which is proven by Dr. Thomas
Barnes from the University of Texas at El Paso, who demonstrates that the
half-life of the Earth's magnetic field is 1,400 years.

First of all, Barnes' magnetic field argument falsely assumes that the
decay of the magnetic field is linear when in fact geophysics
demonstrates that it fluctuates through time. In addition, it is
amusing that creationists dismiss all dating techniques with the sweep of
the hand, except for those that purportedly support their position.

The various dating techniques, however, are found not only to be quite
reliable, but there is considerable independent corroboration between
them. For example, there are radiometric dates for different
elements from the same rock that all converge on the same date.

20. Classification of organisms above the species level is arbitrary and
man-made. Taxonomy proves nothing.

The science of classification is indeed, man-made, like all the
sciences. But its grouping of organisms is anything but arbitrary,
even though there is an element of subjectivity to it.

The very
goal of cladistics, in fact, is to make taxonomy non-subjective.
Nested hierarchies of classification is one of the strongest sources of
evidence for evolution.

There is nothing arbitrary, for example,
about a separate classification of humans and chimpanzees. No one
gets them confused.

An interesting cross-cultural test of this
claim is the fact that western-trained biologists and native peoples from
New Guinea identify the same types of birds as separate species.
Such groupings really do exist in nature.

21. If evolution is gradual, there should be no gaps between species, and
classification (taxonomy) is impossible.

Evolution is not always gradual. It is often quite sporadic.
And evolutionists never said there should not be gaps. Gaps do not
prove creation any more than blank spots in human history prove that all
civilizations were spontaneously created.

22. "Living fossils" like the coelacanth and horseshoe crab
prove that all life was created at once.

Then what about all the extinct species? Are these God's
mistakes? Living fossils (organisms that have not changed for
millions of years) simply means that they evolved an adequate structure
for a relatively static and unchanging environment, good enough to
maintain a niche.

23. The incipient structure problem completely refutes natural
selection: a new structure that evolves slowly over time would not
provide an advantage to the organism in its beginning or intermediate
stages, only when it is completely developed, which can only happen by
special creation. E.g., what good is 5% of a wing, or 55%?
You need all or nothing.

A poorly developed wing may have been a well-developed something else,
like a thermoregulator for ectothermic reptiles (who depend on external
sources of heat).

And, it is not true that incipient stages are
completely useless. It is better to have partial sight versus
complete blindness, or the ability to glide, even if you cannot sustain
controlled flight.

24. Homologous structures (the wing of the bat, flipper of a whale, the
arm of man) are proof of intelligent design.

By invoking miracles and special providence, of course, the creationist
can pick and choose anything in nature as proof of God's work, and then
ignore the rest.

Homologous structures, on the other hand, make no
sense from a special creation paradigm. Why should a whale have the
same bones in its flipper as a human has in its arm and a bat has in its
wing?

The answer is: none whatsoever. Surely an intelligent
designer could have done better than that. These structures are
indicative of descent with modification, not divine creation.

25. "The Bible is the written Word of God...all of its assertions
are historically and scientifically true. The great Flood described
in Genesis was an historical event, worldwide in its extent and
effect.

We are an organization of Christian men of science, who
accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. The account of the
special creation of Adam and Eve as one man and one woman, and their
subsequent Fall into sin, is the basis for our belief in the necessity of
a Savior for all mankind."